miniPC's for the Client-Side?

[funkstar]

that is a very nice little PC.

not many places selling it yet though. But did find one in the UK

http://www.ambros.co.uk/product/879/...00b-basic.html

£699 including taxes.

[overture]

I like it! ...a little pricey though... but I like it.

[funkstar]

Indeed.

I had a thought last night about replacing my laptop and using my current one as a frontend. Considdering i'd like to uprade this thing anyway, it will work out less over all.

This got me thinking.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/pro...MS/3087/389383

Sure it only has 256MB, but upgrade that and you are all set, and it's about half the price of that one too. And yeas, i know it isn't as pretty, but to be honest i'd rather hide the front ends away somewhere anyway.

This one is a pretty good deal too:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd/...NT/7110/103549

[overture]

Hi funkstar,

Have you had any experience with the mini-itx boards? They look very cool.

Phil

[funkstar]

not any actual hand on experience. i have looked at them from time to timefor various reasons though.

a couple of good UK sites (from what i can tell) are http://www.linitx.com/ and http://www.mini-itx.com/. The first one actually have a very sweet looking Core2Duo mini-ITX board. So it should be possible to build a very little HD capable system.

[overture]

sounds excellent!

excuse my ignorance, but what type of graphics card would be required and what would be the best method of cooling it?

[Bram]

Talking a bout small computers.... This thingy runs Linux, has a 10/100/1000 NIC and can run a resolution of 1024/768 on your screen.



But I doubt it has a DX9 videocard

[overture]

who makes it?

[funkstar]

Originally Posted by Bram

But I doubt it has a DX9 videocard

Or enough processing power to do anything useful as far as MediaPortal is concerned

[funkstar]

Originally Posted by overture

sounds excellent!

excuse my ignorance, but what type of graphics card would be required and what would be the best method of cooling it?

forgot about the graphics card.

The boards i was thinking about are made by Commell and come with two miniPCI slots (they look like laptop memory card slots) and a PCIe x16 slot. You could either use the onboard video or get a PCIe card. If you eventually wanted to use HDCP controlled HD video, then you will need a seperate PCIe card that had a DVI or HDMI port that supports HDCP. It wouldn't need to be very powerful as you won't need the 3D capabilities.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see more lower end HDCP enabled cards in the future. There will be more and more people like us that need DVI/HDMI and HDCP but are not going to be using them for games.